


The Lights That Stop Me, Turn To Stone

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Take Me To The Stars [12]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Flirting, Grief, Memory Alteration, Old Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-12 19:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17473388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: The Doctor is surprised by an old friend. An old friend who is intent on critiquing the Doctor's choice of interior design, chatting her up, and revealing some surprising truths.





	The Lights That Stop Me, Turn To Stone

**Author's Note:**

> From allnewtpir's prompt:
> 
>   _Thusly, let's have Missy see the new desktop, think 13 did it on purpose for her and both misunderstanding and snogging ensues. Bonus if Clara then enters and facepalms._
> 
> Got a bit dark. Also, major sorry to Eleven's first TARDIS. Never liked it.

“This is very, very nice,” a sickeningly familiar voice drawls from the shadows as the Doctor crosses the threshold, and she resists the urge to groan as she approaches the console and flicks several switches as covertly as possible. She’d been happy to discover that her oldest friend wasn’t dead – well, she might still be maybe-dead; wibbly wobbly timey-wimey and all – and she’d been happy to be rescued from a narrow-minded homophobe by the other Last of the Time Lords. But now?

She’s less happy to discover that Missy has somehow, inexplicably, found her way into the TARDIS. _Her_ TARDIS. Her newly-redecorated, previously-safe-as-metaphorical-houses and decidedly psychopath-free TARDIS. More worryingly, her remarkably unprotesting TARDIS, who is burbling away to herself with something akin to… what is that? Smugness? Warmth? Welc-

“I think she missed me,” Missy purrs with lascivious delight, stepping out of the darkness and into the warm amber light of the central console and its surrounding columns. She trails her hand over one of the blocks of raw-hewn amber, and the Doctor _swears_ that the TARDIS lets out a pleased little sound of contentment. “I can’t say I blame her, I have made _quite_ the impact on her in the past.” 

“Yes, I do vividly recall that time you cannibalised her and turned her into a Paradox Machine,” the Doctor says icily, feeling a flash of pain at the recollection of seeing her TARDIS so intrinsically corrupted; an echoing memory flashing across her consciousness of how the time machine had screamed out in agony to her to be saved from a fate worse than death. “Quite the impact, wasn’t it?” 

“Please,” Missy says dismissively, waving her hand as though what she had done were a trifling, trivial thing. “We patched things up after that, didn’t we? When I did all that lovely maintenance for you, while you were off with Exposition and Comic Relief heroically rescuing Picts from Romans, or something.” 

“That…” the Doctor’s face falls as she realises what Missy is very probably insinuating, and what it means for her own safety. She groans aloud. “You installed a remote entry point, didn’t you? I knew letting you do unsupervised maintenance was a bad-” 

“Don’t be absurd,” Missy snaps, looking insulted by the very suggestion. “What do you think I am, a Shobogan? Or worse still, a human? How insulting; how truly, truly insulting. Do recall that I’m much too intelligent to use such primitive methods of entry, dear. No, the TARDIS and I just… had a girly chat. Reached an understanding. All that jazz. She let me in quite willingly; flung her doors wide and rolled out the red carpet. _So_ friendly of her.”

“Right. So, she forgave you for what you did? For everything you did, actually, both to her and to me?” 

“Well, she isn’t exactly an entirely blameless entity, is she? All that tipping you out? All that crash landing?”

There’s a guilt-stricken warble from the central column at that, and Missy smirks, knowing she’s touched a nerve. It’s fleeting, nothing more than a quick twist of the lips, but the Doctor still catches the expression and still despises her for it, loathing her smugness. “She’s my ship,” she reminds Missy icily. “She has always been my ship, and any of her failings are on me. Anything she has done, that is on me. The day I regenerated… she was afraid. She was so, so afraid, and so terrified of any further damage occurring to her after last time that she did what she thought was right.”

“She dropped you five thousand feet onto Sheffield. You could’ve been killed.” 

“Highly unlikely,” the Doctor scoffs, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of the suggestion. “All that post-regeneration energy? More likely I could’ve caused a mass evolutionary event. Accelerated technological and biological development, sociocultural growth, economic boom…”

“Which in Sheffield would only take them up to… what? The early eighteenth century?” 

“Why are you being so catty?” the Doctor snaps, then immediately regrets the sharpness of her tone. “Sorry. I’m pleased to see you, I am, it’s just… a surprise.” 

“I know,” Missy says more gently, her expression turning contrite. “But seeing the TARDIS like this is a surprise. Then again, you always redecorate when you have a regeneration crisis, and I’d imagine discovering you’re a lady was indeed quite the crisis.” 

“Did _you_ have a crisis when you found out?” 

“No, I had a…” Missy begins gleefully, then catches sight of the Doctor’s raised eyebrows and gives a self-conscious little toss of her hair. “Never mind, it’s not important. I will say, this is a vast improvement on the futuristic pumpkin.” 

“The _what_?”

“Oh, please. I know you adored little Amelia Pond, but you didn’t need to take your interior design tips from her, and especially not quite so unsubtly. All that orange and arcing curves and entirely suggestive clear flooring. Utterly absurd and wholly impractical all round, really, dear.” 

“Sorry, back up, _futuristic pumpkin?_ ” 

“Better than the grunge phase, too. Goodness, that was ghastly. I thought about doing a revamp when I ah… borrowed the old girl for my needs, but I figured that might have been a step too far. Goodness, all that gloom and burnished metal was just so _messy_. Wholly impractical, too, how were you ever meant to find anything?” 

“What…” 

“Personally, I liked the books and the leather wing-back armchairs. _Very_ me. Could have used a few more doilies, but that couldn’t be helped. You can’t go far wrong with books and armchairs, I find. They’re very suggestive of both wisdom and… well, impropriety. Deliciously so.” 

“Sorry, but how do you know _any_ of this?” the Doctor asks with incredulity, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “You never saw half of those console rooms – I’m pretty sure you were _dead_ for most of them.” 

“Not dead, dear,” Missy says dismissively, rolling her eyes with impatience. “Trapped back on our favourite shithole in a Time Lock. Keep up.”

“So how…” 

“There were _some_ perks to being back on Gallifrey, Doctor. You think I didn’t keep tabs on you? You think I didn’t hack into the systems occasionally and see how my bezzie mate was doing? I upheld a part-time interest in you – _purely_ professional, mind.” 

The Doctor’s cheeks flush scarlet at the implications, and she starts to stammer something about privacy, but Missy only rolls her eyes again. 

“Yes, you’re right to do that, Doctor. Some of the things you’ve done against this console are _shocking_.”

“I…” the Doctor mumbles, certain she’s as red as a tomato, and mentally running through her itinerary of Embarrassing Sex Things, wondering which, precisely, Missy had had the misfortune to happen upon. “You shouldn’t have… we were… that is…”

“I always knew that River was a bad influence on you, darling,” Missy arches a delicate eyebrow, as though daring the Doctor to challenge her for so much as mentioning the name. “Dear. It made little old me blush, to see you-” 

“Yes, that’s quite enough of that. Why are you here? Other than to rate my taste in interior design and be critical of my life choices? Because I would like to point out that this layout wasn’t anything to do with me, so I can’t actually take any credit or offer any apologies, depending on how you ultimately feel about it. It was entirely automated and entirely based on the TARDIS’s preferences. I was-”

“In Sheffield, walking around in a bedraggled suit. Yes, I know. It was an excellent look.”

“How many tabs do you keep on me?” the Doctor asks suspiciously, becoming increasingly concerned about Missy’s seeming omniscience. “Because you’re very… clued up.”

“About two-hundred and ninety-one,” Missy says at once, narrowing her eyes and then adding: “Give or take. You should see my browser history. And by the way – nothing is more annoying than your singing. Especially when I can’t work out which tab it’s coming from.”

“Excuse me, the browser history line is my thing.” 

“Was, darling. _Was_. I’ve appropriated it.”

“Thanks a lot.” 

“No, thank _you_ ,” Missy says with surprising sincerity, running her fingertips over some of the console’s switches and dials. The Doctor wishes she wouldn’t, but the TARDIS doesn’t seem to object to the contact, so she only scowls and resigns herself to Missy’s apparent intimacy with her time machine. “Honestly, this entire interior is rather nice. And if the TARDIS did it, well then… she knows you very well. Knows what you _want_ very well. Because this is all very familiar, isn’t it?”

“Missy, I really don’t know what you mean.”

“Now, Thete,” Missy tilts her head to the side, and the Doctor takes a deep breath and dares to edge closer to her, trying not to let her fellow Time Lady see how much the casual use of her old nickname bothers her. She leans against the opposite side of the console to Missy, trying to use the central column to shield herself from her old friend’s gaze. “Don’t tease me.” 

“I’m not teasing. I genuinely don’t know what you mean.” 

“Tsk,” Missy murmurs, circling the console until she’s mere inches from the Doctor, who resists the urge to cringe away. “You really don’t remember the glorious interior of my TARDIS?”

The Doctor remembers then that Missy must still _have_ a TARDIS tucked away somewhere, and that thought would be alarming enough even if it weren’t coupled with the heavily suggestive attitude her fellow Time Lady is laying on with a trowel. “I don’t,” she assures Missy, swallowing thickly and feeling a rising surge of panic. “Starkly practical was my last recollection.” 

“Dear,” Missy clicks her tongue, evidently disappointed by this nugget of information. “I suppose it’s a good thing my little cocktail worked, but I was hoping for _some_ flashes to bleed through. Nothing major; just enough to make you faintly aroused at inconvenient points. Saving a planet and them – _bam_ , confusing arousal. But if that isn’t the case, then let me remind you.”

The Doctor feels an obtrusive presence attempting to enter her mind, and after locking eyes with Missy and raising her chin defiantly, she relents. There’s an immediate image of a sumptuous console room bathed in red light, then a bedroom, and then- 

She turns as scarlet as the lighting she has just witnessed, forcing Missy out of her head with difficulty and shaking her head hard, hoping to clear the images from her mind’s eye. Missy is laughing, and she moves to the opposite side of the console as she does so, as though worried what the Doctor might do as her memories return. 

“See? I’d hoped you’d have some flashbacks, but I must have used too high a dose.” 

It’s then that the Doctor realises what Missy is saying, and she scowls blackly at the cackling Time Lady. 

“You _drugged me_?” 

“You asked me to,” Missy’s laughter dies as she realises the Doctor isn’t finding the situation quite as amusing. “Almost immediately, actually. Said something about how what we’d done hadn’t helped with the grief, or that it had exacerbated it, or something. You were sort of crying by that point, so you weren’t entirely coherent.” 

"What grief?” 

“You know what grief,” Missy says gently, even as the Doctor feels the first twinges of understanding, the cogs in her brain clicking into place as she reconciles the newly-restored memories with gaps in her personal timeline. “Don’t worry, I didn’t hold it over you, and I still don’t. You needed someone, and that was me, and I personally believe, not to brag or anything, that I helped – even if you _think_ you don’t remember anything that happened. But you _must_ have recalled a little of it, even subconsciously, because this mood lighting is awfully familiar, don’t you think?”

“The mood lighting,” a new voice interjects, and the Doctor turns to the doors of the TARDIS with a tangible sense of relief. “Is in my honour, I think you’ll find.” 

“Puppy,” Missy beams, her face lighting up. “So good to see you again.”

“Can you not chat my girlfriend up?” Clara asks, approaching them with her arms folded and her sternest teacher face on. “And can you not bring up your weird pity shag?”

“Clara,” the Doctor says softly, reaching for her, and she watches as her immortal girlfriend’s entire persona softens in an instant. Clara crosses the room to her at once, folding her into the warmth of her arms, and she feels herself calm a modicum in response to the welcome physical contact. Knowing what she did with Missy is almost too much to process, and she feels an overwhelming sense of guilt and self-loathing which only intensifies in proximity to Clara. The embrace is comforting and yet overwhelming, all at once, and she’s torn between holding onto her partner all the tighter and pushing her away in shame. 

“It’s alright,” Clara soothes, the Doctor able to sense the vitriolic stare that she’s affixing Missy with, and it’s Missy that she addresses next: “The mood lighting is off the back of one of my comments, from a spaceship at the end of the universe. It’s nothing to do with you. None of this is. You weren’t invited into our TARDIS, and we don’t want you here.” 

“I…” 

“Look at what you’ve done to her,” Clara says fiercely, as the Doctor finally decides to cling to her like a lifeline. “Look at what your stupid, thoughtless words and your stupid, hateful intrusion into her mind has done. You couldn’t have simply let it be, could you? You couldn’t just leave her in blissful ignorance. No, you had to damage her. You had to show up and create drama, exactly like you always do.”

“I didn’t…”

“You didn’t think, no. Get out. Go on. Get out of our TARDIS.”

Missy hesitates for a moment and then does as she’s bid. She’s almost at the doors when she turns and says quietly: “I’m sorry.” 

Neither of them acknowledge her, so she steps outside and closes the doors behind her, leaving them alone together at last. 

“Hey,” Clara says quietly, and the Doctor feels strong, capable hands stroking her hair, cupping her cheeks. “Doctor? Doctor, look at me.”

After a moment the Doctor manages to, but she can hardly bear it. The shame burns across her face, and she wants the TARDIS to simply vanish her – to teleport her away from Clara and into the relative safety of… well, any other room, really; anywhere that isn’t here with Clara. She offers a silent plea to the time machine to this effect, but it proves fruitless. 

“You feel… what, ashamed? Disloyal?” Clara asks in a soft voice. “Confused?” 

The Doctor nods miserably, grateful to not have to elucidate her feelings aloud. 

“Well, don’t.”

This reaction is so extraordinary that the Doctor finds her voice at last. “What?” 

“I was dead and gone, and you were lonely, and probably scared. You wanted comfort, and that’s understandable. She’s your friend, Doctor. She’s your friend, and you sought comfort, and she took advantage of that fact to sleep with you.” 

“It’s not… she didn’t force… I _wanted_ to. Sleep with her, that is. At the time.”

“I mean,” Clara grins, briefly, before her serious expression returns. “She’s a very attractive lady. In a murderous sort of way. I can fully understand that sentiment.”

“I wanted to sleep with her, in the heat of the moment, but then I felt… I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like I’d disrespected you. Disrespected your memory. Like I’d defiled that and ruined it forever.”

“I was dead and gone,” Clara reminds her pragmatically. “OK? You don’t have to worry about it. Please, don’t worry about it, because I don’t hold it against you in the slightest. I hold it against _her_ , for holding it over you and for reminding you of it now when she could have left it buried and forgotten. But you? Not ever.” 

“When did you get so wise and understanding?” 

“Probably around the time the love of my life turned into a Scottish man with a magician’s coat, and then my wisdom only intensified around the time he turned into a woman from Yorkshire.” 

“Ah.” 

“Yes, ah.” 

“Do you really think you inspired the mood lighting?”                                                                                     

“Well, I’m certainly hoping so,” Clara shrugs, then tips her a wink. “If not, which of your other girlfriends do I need to beat up?”

“Hilarious,” the Doctor deadpans. “Truly. It does make sense, though.” 

The ship burbles an assertion, and they raise their eyebrows at the ship in tandem. 

“Well,” Clara says, patting the console fondly. “How times have changed between us, eh?”


End file.
